STYLE AND THE CLASSICS
STYLE AND THE CLASSICS STYLE AND THE CLASSICS Whoever talks of excellence as common and abundant, is on the way to lose all right standard of excellence. And when the right standard of excellence is lost, it is not likely that much which is excellent will be produced. — MATTHEW Ammo, Essays in Criticism, Second Series. Although fairly good prose is much more common than fairly good verse, yet I hold that truly fine prose is more rare than truly fine poetry. I trust that it will be counted neither a whim nor a paradox if I give it as a reason that mastery in prose is an art more difficult than mastery in verse. The very freedom of prose, its want of conventions, of settled prosody, of musical inspiration, give wider scope for failure and afford no beaten paths. — FREDERIC HARR/BON, On English Prose. I do not know — and I do not believe that anyone knows, however much he may juggle with terms — why certain words arranged in certain order stir one like the face of the sea, or like the face of a girl, while other arrangements leave one absolutely indifferent or excite boredom or dislike. — GEORGE SAIN'TSBURT, A History of Criticism. No style is good that is not fit to be spoken or read aloud with effect. —WnaLias HAzurr, The Plain Speaker. [ Each phrase in literature is built of sounds, as each phrase in music consists of notes. One sound suggests, echoes, demands, and harmonizes with another; and the art of rightly using these concordances is the final art in literature. — ROBERT Loins STEVENSON, On Some Technical Elements of Style in Literature. AMONG the editors who have made known their wants in the monthly. Bulletin of the Authors' League of America, only one states that contributions must be written "with due regard to English style. " The omission, in many of the other cases, is significant. A well-known fiction editor remarked, in a lecture, to a college class in the short story, that though editors do not discourage finish of style they do not call for it — with the implication that it adds nothing to the money value of a story. Another editor, equally well known, is reputed to have said that there is no such thing as a classic — that his clever writers are just as good as Stevenson and Thackeray and Swift and Addison. And an anonymous contributor to the Saturday Evening Postdelivers himself of this naiveverdict: The principal reason a gem of literature is called classic is because it is old. The authors who are now revered as producers of classics — the boys we all revere and never read — were pretty lucky in their day and gen eration; for, with most of them, the sole reason for the embalming of their productions in the amber of literary regard is found in the anterior period in which they were produced, and not in the art of their productions. There was not so much competition, and they got by rather easily. Making due allowance for the fact that this verdict occurs in a humorous article, one may still surmise that it represents pretty accurately the sober opinion of its author (whose name is known to the present writer). Certain it is that this somewhat egotistical contributor did not get his own style from the classics; else he would have learned not to waste words. As educators have mournfully and frequently asserted, the ultra-popular periodical lowers the tone of written and spoken English by encouraging, in fact insisting upon, a profusion of colloquialisms and slang. In humorous articles and stories this is somewhat defensible; but it probably accounts for the fact that, in a recent test, half of the students in a college class in rhetoric were unable to recognize as slang the term "joy ride. " As mentioned in the last chapter, 0. Henry will undoubtedly suffer from his too liberal use of ephemeral slang. Twenty-five years from now most of this slang will have been forgotten and new phrases will have taken the place of the old — to be forgotten in their turn. But the phrases of Swift and Addison, written in the early eighteenth century, are as good to-day as when the wits of the Queen Anne coffee houses first applauded them. Swift was "the prince of journalists"; but he would not have been known to-day if he had not been something more. He was a literary artist. Certain editors of highly popular magazines have steadfastly set their faces against allowing America to become what Lord Palmerston called Germany: "A land of damned professors. " But it must be remembered that such editors — and some book publishers also — are of the business-man type rather than the literary type. Some of them would apparently like to create a sort of French Revolution in literature, in the course of which all the "highbrows" should be guillotined and all the other fellows exalted. If this blessed millennium ever arrives, we shall all humbly admit that we were mistaken in preferring Stevenson to Samuel G. Blythe, and we shall calmly accept the new literary era in which businesslike editors of periodicals with a circulation of a million or two millions shall act as arbiters of the reading and literary destinies of the American people! But — first listen to Harry Leon Wilson, who, as a favorite contributor to the Post, cannot be accused of being a "high-brow. " In the Sunsymposium, referred to in the preceding chapter, he quotes a request for a story: "We would prefer that it be a romance with a strong love interest and a charming girl heroine, so to say, with a dramatic ending that will surprise the reader. " And he adds this comment: If we are still at the diaperous stage it is because publishers have kept us there. Roughly speaking, they are all about equally guilty. The proof of it is that scarce one of them will see anything cheap or funny or impertinent in the above prescription — or, alas! more dreadful still, anything significant. Publishers get to be like that. . God knows I do truly rate my own writings as but of moderate worth, but I have never known a publisher who was as meek as he should have been, even in my poor presence. I know hardly one of them that wouldn't feel competent to tell me the sort of thing I ought to write. And they are doing it and we are doing it — too many of us. Mr. Wilson deserves a medal for his frankness. Good writers should not allow themselves to be bullied by editors and publishers. The fact is that we are in danger of developing in America a race of literary invertebrates. They write mediocre sex stories when they might be writing good outdoor stories of adventure or serious studies of genuine contemporary problems. And American readers of popular magazines are rapidly losing their respect for that which most surely distinguishes real literature — the genius for expression, for style. This is the nub of the whole matter. We acclaim as geniuses writers who have never learned how to write and who never will, men and women who have never felt the joy of the finely turned phrase and the subtle prose rhythm of a Stevenson or a Lamb. Aside from his ability as a thinker and an interpreter of life, the chief excuse for a writer's occupation — I am speaking here of belles lettresrather than of manuals of information — is his ability to say felicitously what we have all felt but could never hope to catch in the magic leash of words. ' This ability is possessed by not more than a minority of our American fiction writers. Says Kipling, in a recent poem: "Ah1 what avails the classic bent, And what the chosen word, Against the uncultured incident That actually occurred?" 1 If, however, the incident is not only uncultured but fictitious, then there is little excuse for the absence of well-wrought phraseology. The crudity of American prose style in fiction is becoming hardly less than alarming. Of the four excellences of prose style mentioned by Matthew Arnold — regularity, uniformity, precision, balance — many of our novelists and short story writers seem never to have heard. Jack London, for example, a writer of real talent, has never overcome the painful unevenness of texture which marks the 'prentice. He is an artist in spots — a good many spots in The Call of the Wild and John Barleycorn—buthe is not a consistent artist. When Chesterton called this an age of inspired office boys, he was more nearly right with reference to this country than to his own. "Fame's great antiseptic, style, " has been applied to very few of the somewhat pathological specimens of recent "bestsellers. " John Galsworthy had it in his Dark Flower; but Mr. Galsworthy is a Briton. The unevenness of Rupert Hughes' performance in What Will People Say? is a lamentable contrast. But it is not the purpose of the present writer to multiply lists of offenders against style —against adequate expression. It suffices to say that there are only two classes of authors: those who have a literary conscience and those who have none. Many of our American fiction writers may be estimable private citizens; but some of them have not been reared in a genuinely literary atmosphere like that in which authors such as Mr. Galsworthy were reared. They would probably reject as laughable Milton's definition of a real book as "the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. " If it were not for the editorial shibboleth, "American subjects for American readers, " more Britons would probably crowd out Americans from the popular magazines than at present; for even the most businesslike type of editor has a sneaking admiration for style — though he might not recognize it by this name. What American humorist in fiction has anything like the unerring sense of humorous and characterizing phrase that distinguishes the work of W. W. Jacobs? Concerning his rivals in this country, it may be said that most of them are merely clever journalists. And some of them would be generous enough to admit it. Booth Tarkington's Penrod tales, however, show a style above journalese; likewise his novel, The Turmoil, which is a much-needed criticism of our American glorification of commercialism, of business life. Gouverneur Morris, in answering a query put to him as to the best short story in English, after naming several, humorously , added: "I like my own stories better than anybody else's — until they are written. " The remark is a complete justification of the desirability of spending laborious days and nights in acquiring a good English style, an adequate means of expression. Mr. Morris himself has it when he does not write too rapidly and when he is engaged on a theme which really pleases him. And he got it from masters like Stevenson, not from the advice of brisk and businesslike editors of --periodicals with immense circulation. The advice, however, of such editors as Henry Mills Alden of Harper's Magazine, or the late Richard Watson Gilder of the Century, never harmed, I suspect, any contributor's literary style. Turn back to that passage from Stevenson's The Sire de Malêtroit's Door, on page 157, and observe the minute accuracy and fine literary conscience with which each word, each phrase, is chosen and is set in its proper place. Who, among the contributors to the Saturday Evening Post, could write such a passage to-day? Or take the even better passage from Markheim, which describes the murderer's consciousness of his surroundings just after the crime: Time had some score of small voices in that shop, some stately and slow as was becoming to their great age; others garrulous and hurried. All these told out the seconds in an intricate chorus of tickings. Then the passage of a lad's feet, heavily running on the pavement, broke in upon these smaller voices and startled Markheim into a consciousness of his surroundings. He looked about him awfully. The candle stood on the counter, its flame solemnly wagging in a draught; and by that inconsiderable movement, the whole room was filled with noiseless bustle and kept heaving like a sea: the tall shadows nodding, the gross blots of darkness swelling and dwindling as with respiration, the faces of the portraits and the china gods changing and wavering like images in water. The inner door stood ajar, and peered into that leaguer of shadows with a long slit of daylight like a pointing finger. Here Stevenson has perhaps gone too far in his search for the fresh and striking phrase — in "solemnly wagging, " for instance. But his final simile, "like a pointing finger, " is marvellously adapted to his purpose. The very vocabulary of such a passage is beyond most of our modern successful writers for magazines. And its prose rhythm is as carefully calculated and as pleasing in effect as its diction. Kipling, though he lacks the fine finish of Stevenson, is often nearly as felicitous in expression. His phrase, in Without Benefit of Clergy, expressing the fear of a husband for the safety of his loved ones, is perfection. "The most soul-satisfying fear known to man, " he calls it. Shakespeare himself could hardly have bettered that. Take, again, that memorable passage from Thackeray's Henry Esmond 1 which pictures Beatrix Esmond as she comes down the staircase: Esmond had left a child and found a woman, grown beyond the common height, and arrived at such a dazzling completeness of beauty that his eyes might well show surprise and delight at beholding her. In hers there was a brightness so lustrous and melting that I have seen a whole assembly follow her as by an attraction irresistible. . . . Her eyes, hair, and eyebrows and eyelashes were dark, her hair curling in rich undulations and waving Book ii, chap. vii. over her shoulders; but her complexion was as dazzling white as snow in sunshine, except her cheeks, which were a bright red, and her lips, which were of a still deeper crimson. Her mouth and chin, they said, were too large and full; and so they might be for a goddess in marble, but not for a woman whose eyes were fire, whose look was love, whose voice was the sweetest low song, whose shape was perfect symmetry, health, decision, activity, whose foot as it planted itself on the ground was firm but flexible, and whose motion, whether rapid or slow, was always perfect grace —agile as a nymph, lofty as a queen — now melting, now imperious, now sarcastic: there was no single movement of hers but was beautiful. As he thinks of her, he who writes feels young again, and remembers a paragon. After comparing such a passage with, say, a description of one of Gene Stratton Porter's latest heroines, or Robert W. Chambers', or Harold Bell Wright's, will anyone have the temerity to assert that there is no such thing as a classic? The very movement and melody of Thackeray's sentence beginning, "Her mouth and chin, they said, " are far beyond the powers of most of our present-day writers of fiction. And the way in which he individualizes Beatrix is a lesson to those who have only one type of heroine, on which they play numberless variations — the same being true of the illustrators who call themselves "artists. " How is it that Joseph Conrad, in his muchpraised story, Heart of Darkness, gains his remarkable effect of atmosphere if not by style — by remarkable resources of expression? The temptation to quote without limit is strong, but I content myself with one passage which shows an almost perfect adaptation of means to end. It is from Conrad's story, The Lagoon. ' I have italicized a few phrases which are particularly felicitous: The white man rested his chin on his crossed arms and gazed at the wake of the boat. At the end of the straight avenue of forests cut by the intense glitter of the river, the sun appeared unclouded and dazzling, poised low over the water that shone smoothly like a band of metal. The forests, somber and dull, stood motionless and silent on each side of the broad stream. At the foot of big, towering trees, trunkless nipa palms rose from the mud of the bank, in bunches of leaves enormous and heavy, that hung unstirring over the brown swirl of eddies. In the stillness of the air, every tree, every leaf, every bough, every tendril of creeper and every petal of minute blossoms seemed to have been bewitched into an immobility perfect and final. Nothing moved on the river but the eight paddles that rose flashing regularly, dipped together with a single splash; while the steersman swept right and left with a periodic and sudden flourish of his blade describing a glinting semicircle above his head. The churned-up water frothed alongside with a confused murmur. And the white man's canoe, advancing up stream in the short-lived disturbance of its own making, seemed to enter the portals of a land from which the very memory of motion had forever departed. . . . Astern of the boat the repeated call of some bird, a cry discordant and feeble, skipped along over the smooth water and lost itself, before it could reach the other shore, in the breathless silence of the world. . . . The course of the boat had been altered at right angles to the stream, and the carved dragon-head of its prow was pointing now at a gap in the fringing bushes of the bank. It glided through, brushing the overhanging twigs, and disappeared from the river like some slim and amphibious creature leaving the water for its lair in the forests. The narrow creek was like a ditch: tortuous, fabulously deep; filled with gloom under the thin strip of pure and shining blue of the heaven Immense trees soared up, invisible behind their festooned draperies of creepers. Here and there, near the glistening blackness of the water, a twisted root of some tall tree showed amongst the tracery of small ferns, black and dull, writhing and motionless, like an arrested snake. The short words of the paddlers reverberated loudly between the thick and somber walls of vegetation. Darkness oozed out from between the trees, through the tangled maze of the creepers, from behind the great fantastic and unstirring leaves; the darkness, mysterious and invincible; the darkness scented and poisonous of impenetrable forests. One of Kipling's critics, Professor Henry S. How is it that Joseph Conrad, in his muchpraised story, Heart of Darkness, gains his remarkable effect of atmosphere if not by style — by remarkable resources of expression? The temptation to quote without limit is strong, but I content myself with one passage which shows an almost perfect adaptation of means to end. It is from Conrad's story, The Lagoon. 1 I have italicized a few phrases which are particularly felicitous: The white man rested his chin on his crossed arms and gazed at the wake of the boat. At the end of the straight avenue of forests cut by the intense glitter of the river, the sun appeared unclouded and dazzling, poised low over the water that shone smoothly like a band of metal. The forests, somber and dull, stood motionless and silent on each side of the broad stream. At the foot of big, towering trees, trunkless nipa palms rose from the mud of the bank, in bunches of leaves enormous and heavy, that hung unstining over the brown swirl of eddies. In the stillness of the air, every tree, every leaf, every bough, every tendril of creeper and every petal of minute blossoms seemed to have been bewitched into an immobility perfect and final. Nothing moved on the river but the eight paddles that rose flashing regularly, dipped together with a single splash; while the steersman swept right and left with a periodic and sudden flourish of his blade describing a glinting semicircle above his head. 'In Tales of Unrest. Doubleday, Page & Co. The churned-up water frothed alongside with a confused murmur. And the white man's canoe, advancing up stream in the short-lived disturbance of its own making, seemed to enter the portals of a land from which the very memory of motion had forever departed. . . . Astern of the boat the repeated call of some bird, a cry discordant and feeble, skipped along over the smooth water and lost itself, before it could reach the other shore, in the breathless silence of the world. . . . The course of the boat had been altered at right angles to the stream, and the carved dragon-head of its prow was pointing now at a gap in the fringing bushes of the bank. It glided through, brushing the overhanging twigs, and disappeared from the river like some slim and amphibious creature leaving the water for its lair in the forests. The narrow creek was like a ditch: tortuous, fabulously deep; filled with gloom under the thin strip of pure and shining blue of the heaven Immense trees soared up, invisible behind their festooned draperies of creepers. Here and there, near the glistening blackness of the water, a twisted root of some tall tree showed amongst the tracery of small ferns, black and dull, writhing and motionless, like an arrested snake. The short words of the paddlers reverberated loudly between the thick and somber walls of vegetation. Darkness oozed out from between the trees, through the tangled maze of the creepers, from behind the great fantastic and unstirring leaves; the darkness, mysterious and invincible; the darkness scented and poisonous of impenetrable forests. One of Kipling's critics, Professor Henry S. Canby, complains that he journalized the short story by making a religion of emphasis, and of emphasis without enough discrimination. Kipling's characters, says this critic, are always "immensely striking people, " his phrases are unusual, even eccentric at times But Professor Canby admits that he is a master of the specific word. The fact is that Kipling, both in phraseology and in character work, displays a trifle too much of that mere cleverness which is to-day accepted by too many editors as the equivalent — which it is not — of artistic and effective workmanship. Kipling's faults have proved easy of imitation, but his power of expression and his insight into human nature cannot easily be reproduced. It is a pretty widely accepted canon of literary criticism that greatness in substance and greatness in style go together; yet it must be admitted that some American writers of fiction really have something to say without knowing how to say it adequately. Among certain magazine writers and editors there is altogether too evident a tendency to decry college education and to glorify newspaper training. The results do not justify their position. The success of even the best humorous tales in the popular periodicals depends largely upon deftness of phrase. This is true of Harry Leon Wilson's Saturday Evening Post serial, Ruggles of Red Gap. Irvin Cobb, in his humorous articles, is often much too glib and journalistic, but he reveals a far better style in his fiction. The Belled Buzzard has real distinction. It was written in the atmosphere of Edgar Allan Poe rather than of the New York World — on which Mr. Cobb used to be a reporter. Of Eleanor Hallowell Abbott and the hysterical style I shall make but brief mention. This author wrote well in Molly Make-Believe, but has since acquired a habit of torturing words and phrases which constitutes at times an actual atrocity. Eccentricity by shrieking emphasis seems to be her goal in her inferior works. Here is a sample — not of her worst — from a rather good story, Man's Place: 1 "Ting-a-ling-ling-ling!" shrieked the Telephone. "Y-e-s?" crooned the Bride. "Is this Mrs. —Mrs. Frazer Hartley?" worried the Voice in the Telephone. "It is!" boasted the Bride. "Urn-m, " faltered the Voice in the Telephone. "Er-r-e-r, that is to say, I have a message for you — it's something about your husband!" "Oh, my goodness!" gasped the Bride. "Has anything happened to Frazer?" Well, whether anything has happened to Frazer or not, something evidently has happened to the English style of Eleanor Hallowell Abbott —and that something is not desirable. She is an author who can write good English when she will; but she never learned this style from Shakespeare and the Bible. Set beside such a passage one from a real artist, William John Hopkins, author of that whimsically delightful novelette, The Clarinet The following is from his short story, With a Savour of Salt, in Harper's Bazar: 1 Nobody said much on the way out. Marian Wafer kept her thoughts to herself, and they must have been pleasant thoughts, for she was half smiling. No one would have needed to ask Helena and Hannibal what they thought, or even to wonder. It was written on their faces. The salt breeze was in their nostrils, and they heard all the little soft sounds: the whishing of the wind in the rigging and on the sails, an occasional soft cluck of a block when the boat rose to a sea, and the gentle bubbling and hissing of the water as she drove through it. They were out of the lee of the land now, and the seas were great green seas, with tops that curled a little and broke in spreading rumbles of foam, which hissed itself away while the seas marched on majestically. It did not seem possible that anything could stop those rolling seas; not a mere shore. Another excellent passage which is particularly notable for its figures of comparison is the following from the opening of Brunt, ' by that conscientious and gifted writer, Fannie Hurst: In Spartan, which lies like a picture-puzzle between the tawny cornfields and the smutty coalfields of Illinois, the rain-crow flies low when autumn threatens, croaking of wet days and chest protectors, of nights filled with the commotion of wind and leaves flopped wetly against windowpanes like boneless hands tapping. Then, and oh, so surely, come the melancholy days themselves, and everybody's picket-fenced-in garden turns to mud with a pull to it, sucking in overshoes and oozing up slipperily over the plank sidewalks. Wagon wheels slither along the unmade streets as if cutting through cold grease. Children, rejoicing in double-session, bob homeward an hour earlier beneath their enveloping umbrellas like a procession of low mushrooms. This is so carefully wrought and so successful in attaining precision that it is no surprise to learn that Miss Hurst writes her stories very slowly. Her future and that of such other young artists as Donn Byrne will be watched with great interest by lovers of real literature. Metropolitan, June, 1916. For a fine maturity, penetration, and simplicity, as well as for remarkable vigor and directness, nearly all living American writers of fiction must yield to Gertrude Atherton. There is no pretty ornamentation in her work, but a good deal of finish. It is worth noting that in the end some of the writers most sought even by the magazines of largest circulation are the artists, not the merchants. The writer without a literary conscience and a literary backbone has no assured future. It is to the men and women who have made their craft a fine art that editors and book publishers eventually come pleading most earnestly — among Americans, to such writers as Booth Tarkington, Edith Wharton, Gertrude Atherton, Winston Churchill, Fannie Hurst. Ten years ago one might have been inclined to add to this list the name of Gouverneur Morris. This paragraph is respectfully dedicated to authors who are grinding out serials at the rate of two or three a year. of a long apprenticeship rather than direct inspiration; and the same is true of the sparkling satires of Freeman Tilden. In both these cases one may perceive that style, in the final analysis, is the man himself — although no man can express himself adequately without long and painful study. Mr. Van Loan's praiseworthy naturalness is exhibited in almost all of his work; but particularly good examples are to be found in his volume of short stories, Buck Parvin and the Movies. This volume and Peter B. Kyne's Cappy Ricks, by the way, show an excellence of character drawing for which one often looks in vain in writers of greater " literary " reputation. The style of Jack London and Rex Beach is full of personality; but in neither case is it a style uniform throughout like John Galsworthy's. And E. Phillips Oppenheim, prolific though he is, shows himself a surer craftsman than most Americans. Strong personality alone is not enough. One of the best examples in English literature of a towering personality is Jonathan Swift; but he was also a trained, conscientious, and therefore remarkably effective writer. Even in his inflammatory pamphlets, The Drapier's Letters, designed to arouse the Irish populace against English misrule, there is a distinction of style as notable as its absolute clearness and naked simplicity. The most ignorant reader could understand it; and the most cultured could admire it. This is the ideal of a style for a periodical of large circulation. Swift's method of testing his clearness may be commended to literary workers who desire a large audience: he admitted to his final version of a manuscript no word or phrase which his domestic servant failed to comprehend. One may surmise that he regaled her only with selected portions as test passages; but he got many a useful hint thereby. Plainness and simplicity are not incompatible with the highest literary art. Certain subjects, however, call for a more extensive vocabulary and a more subtle vein of reflection than the uncultured can understand. The "groundlings" in the pit never got the benefit of the highest flights of Shakespeare; but they got enough else to keep them interested. Let a writer, at any rate, be himself. There is too great a tendency to-day to imitate, more or less openly, the greatest popular magazine successes. But what editors want most is individuality. Every succeeding year proves that there is no sure recipe for a "best-selling" novel. Some new writer steps in with a new idea and a new style and carries home the medal. Let a young author study a hundred successful writers of fiction, if he will, but let him remain true to himself. "No mantle-of-O. -Henry business, please, in advertising my work, " remarked an excellent writer of humorous tales. And he was right. Perhaps the most practical result of the acquirement of a good English style, and therefore the one best worth leaving in one's mind, is the surprising change which it makes in the number of words necessary to express oneself clearly and effectively. Good style implies economy and brevity. It is only the great artist like Guy de Maupassant who finds a 2500-word limit congenial in the short story. The amateur always finds it difficult to condense. It was Stevenson who said that the only test of writing that he knew was this: "If there is anywhere a thing said in two sentences that could have been as clearly and as engagingly and as forcibly said in one, then it's amateur work. " The ability to write without waste is indeed the final goal of any good stylist —the ability to transfer from brain to paper the exact im pression recorded. How seldom this is done may be judged from Gouverneur Morris' remark that he likes his own stories best—"until they are written. " To lessen the escape of precious energy is the object of all ambitious craftsmen. And, whatever the average editor may say, they will keep ever before them that vision of perfection without which good work is impossible. EXERCISES Point out, in a recent issue of the Saturday Evening Post or Collier's, fifteen or more slang phrases in the short stories. Point out a similar number in the stories of 0. Henry. Then apply the same test to Bret Harte's The Outcasts of Poker Flat, Stevenson's Will o' the Mild, and Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King. How many slang phrases, if any, do you discover? Find, if possible, in 0. Henry's stories some slang which has already passed out of use. Copy from one of W. W. Jacobs' humorous tales at least ten brief phrases which show felicity of expression — which characterize a person, or a situation, or which illustrate description of any sort. 3. Make a list, from one of Edith Wharton's stories, or Kipling's, or 0. Henry's, of synonyms or variations of "said, " "replied, " etc. , in the dialogue. Notice also to what extent dialogue is used without any reference to the speakers. When this is clear, it is often the best method —although sometimes "stage directions" or indications of the emotion of the speaker are desirable. Compare Fannie Hurst's Power and Horsepower (in Just Around the Corner) with one of her tales in this volume written in Jewish dialect. Which do you prefer, and why? Do you find many dialect stories in current periodicals? Point out, if possible, any means by which brevity is secured in the tales of Maupassant, W. W. Jacobs, and Stevenson. Does the style of Stevenson seem to you to be too "literary" for the average magazine reader? Mention any recent stories in the Saturday Evening Post which seem to possess finish of style. About what proportion of such stories do you find in the Post? In any other magazine of large circulation? Find a magazine story which is overweighted with adjectives, especially in pairs. Compare the effect with that of a passage from Kipling or Stevenson where the nouns and verbs are more noticeable than the adjectives. Select from a page of a short story by Kipling, Stevenson, W. W. Jacobs, Maurice Hewlett, Joseph Conrad, Poe, or Hawthorne five unusual words which seem to you admirably adapted to their purpose. Then see how many such words you can select from a page by any popular magazine writer. Find two passages in Stevenson's short stories which are particularly felicitous in sound-quality. (See the quotation from him at the beginning of this chapter. ) Copy two passages from Kipling, one of which is written in a truly literary style and the other in a jour[ 199 ] nalistic style — crisp, breezy, informal, but not very polished. Copy two similar passages from 0. Henry. Hazlitt declared that whenever he misquoted Shakespeare he found that he had used a word or phrase inferior to the original. Try this yourself by partly memorizing — not too accurately, for this purpose — a famous passage such as a portion of one of the soliloquies in Hamletand then writing it down and comparing it with the original. (Such a word as the one italicized in the following sentence is a good example of Shakespeare's felicity: "How sweet the moonlightsleeps upon this bank!" Select from three famous short-story writers three passages which differ sharply by revealing in each case the personality of the writer. Comment briefly on the personality in each passage. (Kipling, 0. Henry, Maurice Hewlett, and Stevenson are good writers to examine for this purpose. ) Point out, in a passage from the work of any good short-story writer, the specific (as contrasted with general) words. How many abstract words do you find? Why are more of these used in a treatise on philosophy than in a story? A good style is nearly uniform in texture throughout; it has very few "purple patches" which stand out in contrast to the rest. Copy from a magazine story a short passage which seems notably superior to what precedes and follows. A few lines before and after it will have to be copied also, in order to show the contrast. (Thackeray is an excellent writer to study for uniformity of style — and for a wise philosophy of life as well. ) 1 200 ] Point out a passage, preferably at the opening of a story, which shows almost perfect naturalness of style — as if the tale were being "talked off" to the reader. (Sometimes you will find this "naturalness" associated with considerable carelessness. ) Do you find any differences between Thackeray's style in his essays and that in his novels? Stevenson's? Poe's? What are these differences? (Narrative style should generally be less formal and in a certain sense less dignified than essay style. ) Any good style, particularly in narration, shows a free use of figures. Make a list, from a page by any short-story writer of genuinely literary reputation, of the figures, especially comparisons (metaphor and simile). In the following passages point out, in the case of the pairs of words or phrases in parentheses, which ones were probably used by the author and why. In the case of a single word or phrase in parentheses state whether it should be retained or omitted, and why. This test may profitably be applied by an instructor to several passages from good writers. He may then read the passage as the author wrote it and explain why the author's word or phrase is superior to the one substituted. A little after sundown the full fury of the gale broke forth, such a gale as I have never seen in summer, nor, (seeing how swiftly it had come) (in consideration of the swiftness with which it had come), even in winter. Mary and I sat in silence, the house (shaking) (quaking) overhead, the tempest howling (outside) (without), the fire between us (hissing) (sputtering) with raindrops. Our thoughts were far away with the poor (devils) (fellows) on the schooner, or my not less unhappy uncle, (houseless) on the promontory; and yet (now and then) (ever and again) we were startled back to ourselves, when the wind would rise and (buffet) (strike) the gable like (a giant) (a solid body), or (all of a sudden) (suddenly) fall and draw away, so that the fire (leaped into flame) (blazed up) and our hearts bounded (in our sides). Now the storm (in its might) would seize and shake the four corners of the roof, roaring like Leviathan (does) in anger. Anon, in a lull, cold (gusts) (eddies) of tempest moved (shudderingly) (like a ghost) in the room, lifting the hair upon our heads and passing between us as we sat (listening). And again the wind would break forth in a chorus of (sad noises) (melancholy sounds), hooting low in the chimney, wailing (gently, like the notes of a flute) (with flute-like softness) round the house. . . . Intervals of (dimness) (a groping twilight) alternated with spells of (utter) blackness; and it was impossible to trace the reason of these changes in the (horrible rapidity of the flying clouds) (flying horror of the sky). The wind blew the breath out of a man's nostrils; (the whole sky) (all heaven) seemed to thunder overhead like (a crashing avalanche) (one huge sail). Outside was a wonderful clear (night of stars) (starry night), with here and there a cloud (or two) still hanging, last (remains) (stragglers) of the tempest. It was near the (greatest height) (top) of the flood (tide), and the reefs were roaring in the (windless) quiet of the night (undisturbed by any wind). Never, not even in the height of the tempest, had I heard their (noise) (song) with greater awe. Now, when the winds were (gathered home) (silent), when the (ocean) (deep) was dandling itself back into its (sleep as of summer) (summer slumber), and when the stars (shed) (rained) their (gentle) light over land and sea, the voice of these tide-breakers was still raised for (harm) (havoc). They seemed, indeed, to be a part of the world's evil and the tragic (side) (facet) of life. Category:Style